NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
With his signature wit, charm, and seemingly limitless knowledge, Bill Bryson takes us on a room-by-room tour through his own house, using each room as a jumping off point into the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture. Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and his sheer prose fluency makes At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.
Praise
"Delightful.... Bryson's enthusiasm brightens any dull corner.... Hand over control and simply enjoy the ride."
—The New York Times Book Review
"An exuberant, shared social history. . . . Told with Bryson's habitual brio. . . . A personal compendium of fascinating facts, suggesting how the history of houses and domesticity has shaped our lives, language, and ideas."
—The New York Review of Books
"A treasure trove.... Playful, yes, but Bryson is also a deft historian."
—Los Angeles Times
"If this book doesn't supply you with five years' worth of dinner conversation, you're not paying attention."
—People
"The experience of reading a Bill Bryson book is something you don't want to stop—a pip and a spree and, almost incidentally, a serious education. And never tiresome, for Bryson has the gift of being the student and not the tutor."
—Washington Post
Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.
For a start there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. Despite Katz's overwhelming desire to find cozy restaurants, he and Bryson eventually settle into their stride, and while on the trail they meet a bizarre assortment of hilarious characters. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.
Praise
"Choke-on-your-coffee funny."
—The Washington Post Book World
"Bryson is...great company right from the start--a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley, and...Dave Barry. [Readers] may find themselves turning the pages with increasing amusement and anticipation as they discover that they're in the hands of a satirist of the first rank, who writes (and walks) with Chaucerian brio."
—The New York Times Book Review
"A Walk in the Woods is an almost perfect travel book."
—The Boston Globe
"Bill Bryson is an extremely funny man; the Appalachian Trail is an exceedingly magnificent place; and together they have created an exceedingly fine book. Also, it weighs less than a pound, which is important if you're packing for a long hike."
—Bill McKibben
"The Appalachian Trail...consists of some five million steps, and Bryson manages to coax a laugh, and often an unexpectedly startling insight, out of every one he traverses...It is hard not to grin idiotically through all 304 pages...sheer comic entertainment."
—Kirkus Reviews
After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.
Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.
Praise
"Painfully funny and genuinely insightful...Bryson has never been wittier or more endearing."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"Wonderfully droll...Bryson is unparalleled in his ability to cut a culture off at the knees in a way that is so humorous and so affectionate that those being ridiculed are laughing too hard to take offense."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Bill Bryson makes writing look too easy."
—USA Today
"A cross between de Tocqueville and Dave Barry, Bryson writes about today's America in a way that's both trenchantly observant and pound-on-the-floor, snort-root-beer-out-of-your-nose funny."
—San Francisco Examiner
"Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud."
—Chicago Sun-Times
"[Bryson is] a genuinely funny fellow...The best columns are those in which the author...allows his natural impatience and intelligence out of their cages. his advice to the graduating high school students...is lovely, while his "Rules for Living"...are pleasingly cranky...A column about how large America is and how few people actually live there turns into an illuminating jab at United States immigration politics and should be required reading for politicians."
—New York Times Book Review
"Why are [Bryson's books] so dazzlingly good? The simple answer: Bryson is funny...intelligent, witty, and sensitive to the absurd...Perhaps you are familiar with a writer that has Bryson's mastery of language, wit, fascination with history and statistics, or the impeccable comic timing (though if you are, please tell me—I've been looking for books that make me laugh like this for years.)"
—Chicago Tribune
Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiousity.
Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path. Wherever he goes he finds Australians who are cheerful, extroverted, and unfailingly obliging, and these beaming products of land with clean, safe cities, cold beer, and constant sunshine fill the pages of this wonderful book. Australia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide.
Praise
"What the indefatigable, keenly observant Bryson did a few years back for the Appalachian Trail with A Walk in the Woods...he does now for the generally undiscovered land Down Under."
—Chicago Tribune
"Vastly entertaining...If there is one book with which to get oriented before departure or en route to Australia, this is it."
—New York Times
"What Bill Bryson has done for England and the United States, he has now done for Australia: written a delightfully entertaining travel book."
—The Boston Globe
"The thing that Bryson loves most about Australia—its 'effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world'—is, in fact, his own. They're a perfect fit."
—New York Times Book Review
"Bryson is the perfect traveling companion...when it comes to travel's peculiars the man still has no peers."
—The Times (London)
"A masterpiece in travel literature."
—Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"He arrives at his destination, finds a hotel, checks in, meanders around the neighborhood, visits any museums or public monuments he happens to encounter, has a couple of drinks, eavesdrops on a conversation or two, then goes to bed. A year later, people on three continents are hospitalized as a result of ruptures caused by laughing so hard at his account of the experience."
—The Age (Melbourne)
In A Short History of Nearly Everything, the famed and much beloved writer Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world's most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, traveling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it.
Praise
"Stylish [and] stunningly accurate prose. We learn what the material world is like from the smallest quark to the largest galaxy and at all the levels in between...brims with strange and amazing facts...destined to become a modern classic of science writing."
—New York Times
"Bryson has made a career writing hilarious travelogues, and in many ways his latest is more of the same, except that this time Bryson hikes through the world of science."
—People
"Bryson is surprisingly precise, brilliantly eccentric and nicely eloquent ...a gifted storyteller has dared to retell the world's biggest story."
—Seattle Times
"Hefty, highly researched, and eminently readable."
—Simon Winchester, The Globe and Mail
"All non-scientists (and probably many specialized scientists, too) can learn a great deal from his lucid and amiable explanations."
—National Post
"Bryson is a terrific stylist. You can't help but enjoy his writing, for its cheer and buoyancy, and for the frequent demonstration of his peculiar, engaging turn of mind."
—Ottawa Citizen
"Wonderfully readable. It is, in the best sense, learned."
—Winnipeg Free Press
This new edition of the acclaimed bestseller is lavishly illustrated to convey, in pictures as in words, Bill Bryson's exciting, informative journey into the world of science.
In A Short History of Nearly Everything, beloved author Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as his territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. The result is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it.
Now, in this handsome new edition, Bill Bryson's words are supplemented by full-color artwork that explains in visual terms the concepts and wonder of science, at the same time giving face to the major players in the world of scientific study. Eloquently and entertainingly described, as well as richly illustrated, science has never been more involving or entertaining.
From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."
Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson's earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.
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Praise
"Bill Bryson's laugh-out-loud pilgrimage through his Fifties childhood in heartland America is a national treasure. It's full of insights, wit, and wicked adolescent fantasies."
—Tom Brokaw
"Bryson is unparalleled in his ability to cut a culture off at the knees in a way that is so humorous and so affectionate that those being ridiculed are laughing too hard to take offense."
—The Wall Street Journal
"A cross between de Tocqueville and Dave Barry, Bryson writes about…America in a way that's both trenchantly observant and pound-on-the-floor, snort-root-beer-out-of-your-nose funny."
—San Franciso Examiner
"Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud."
—Chicago Sun-Times
"Bryson is…great company…a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley, and…Dave Barry."
—New York Times Book Review
"Bryson's witty memoir is a celebration of sorts of growing up a half century ago in Des Moines...It celebrates a world before global chains, when ‘community was special and nowhere was like everywhere else.'"
—USA Today
"It's...like he was raised in some unknown country...where people have both droll manners and unabashed warmth. After decades of writing bestselling travel books about Europe and Australia, Bryson has decided to explore the most distant continent of all: his own childhood in 1950s Des Moines."
—Newsweek
"Bill Bryson is erudite, irreverent, funny, and exuberant, making the temptation to quote endlessly from The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid...hard to resist."
—Washington Post Book World
"Here is a man who suffers so his readers can laugh." — Daily Telegraph
Bill Bryson travels to Kenya in support of CARE International. All royalties and profits go to CARE International.
Bryson visits Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, the charity dedicated to eradicating poverty. Kenya is a land of contrasts, with famous game reserves and a vibrant culture. It also provides plenty to worry a traveller like Bill Bryson, fixated as he is on the dangers posed by snakes, insects and large predators. It is also a country with many serious problems: refugees, AIDS, drought, and grinding poverty. The resultant diary, though short in length, contains the trademark Bryson stamp of wry observation and curious insight.
Praise
"Bryson is one of the funniest travel writers in the business."
—The Globe and Mail
"Bryson has become an enormously popular travel writer by coming off as the most literate tour guide you've ever had."
—The New York Times
"Bryson is a terrific stylist. You can't help but enjoy his writing, for its cheer and buoyancy, and for the frequent demonstration of his peculiar, engaging turn of mind."
—Ottawa Citizen
"Bryson is first and foremost a storyteller—and a supremely comic and original one at that."
—Winnipeg Free Press
One of the English language's most skilled and beloved writers guides us all toward precise, mistake-free usage.
As usual Bill Bryson says it best: "English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, full of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense. This is a language where 'cleave' can mean to cut in half or to hold two halves together; where the simple word 'set' has 126 different meanings as a verb, 58 as a noun, and 10 as a participial adjective; where if you can run fast you are moving swiftly, but if you are stuck fast you are not moving at all; [and] where 'colonel,' 'freight,' 'once,' and 'ache' are strikingly at odds with their spellings." As a copy editor for the London Times in the early 1980s, Bill Bryson felt keenly the lack of an easy-to-consult, authoritative guide to avoiding the traps and snares in English, and so he brashly suggested to a publisher that he should write one. Surprisingly, the proposition was accepted, and for "a sum of money carefully gauged not to cause embarrassment or feelings of overworth," he proceeded to write that book–his first, inaugurating his stellar career.
Now, a decade and a half later, revised, updated, and thoroughly (but not overly) Americanized, it has become Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words, more than ever an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language. With some one thousand entries, from "a, an" to "zoom," that feature real-world examples of questionable usage from an international array of publications, and with a helpful glossary and guide to pronunciation, this precise, prescriptive, and–because it is written by Bill Bryson–often witty book belongs on the desk of every person who cares enough about the language not to maul or misuse or distort it.
Praise
"A worthwhile addition to any writer's or editor's reference library."
—Los Angeles Times
"[Bryson is] a world-class grammar maven." —Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
"A usage book with a nice sense of differentiation."
—William Safire, New York Times Magazine
"Bryson's erudition is evident and refreshing...a straightforward, concise, utilitarian guide."
—Publishers Weekly
From one of America's most beloved and bestselling authors, a wonderfully useful and readable guide to the problems of the English language most commonly encountered by editors and writers.
What is the difference between "immanent" and "imminent"? What is the singular form of graffiti? What is the difference between "acute" and "chronic"? What is the former name of "Moldova"? What is the difference between a cardinal number and an ordinal number? One of the English language's most skilled writers answers these and many other questions and guides us all toward precise, mistake-free usage. Covering spelling, capitalization, plurals, hyphens, abbreviations, and foreign names and phrases, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors will be an indispensable companion for all who care enough about our language not to maul, misuse, or contort it.
This dictionary is an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language. As Bill Bryson notes, it will provide you with "the answers to all those points of written usage that you kind of know or ought to know but can't quite remember."
Praise
"One of the best guides to usage there is. I cannot imagine an English-speaking person [who] would not rejoice in [it]."
—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe
"A worthwhile addition to any writer's or editor's reference library."
—Los Angeles Times "[Bryson is] a world-class grammar maven."
—Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
"A usage book with a nice sense of differentiation."
—William Safire, New York Times Magazine
"Bryson's erudition is evident and refreshing…a straightforward, concise, utilitarian guide."
—Publishers Weekly
